


call my heart its home

by zenelly



Series: Smooch-tober 2018 [20]
Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, smoochtober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: For Smoochtober Day 20!  A kiss on the palm.“Stop Staring. You’re being Creepy,” Natsume orders, one golden eye opened, a leonine slit.





	call my heart its home

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on scraps of this for a bit, so here it is.
> 
> Title is lifted from "Autoclave" by The Mountain Goats

 It's quiet down here.

That's all Tsumugi really asks for, some peace and quiet to take into the tumultuous corners of his heart. He goes, steadily, from bookcase to bookcase, fingers tracing down the dusty, worn spines of the volumes contained therein, and sorts them as he goes, shifting the loose ones here and there. It’s like a trance. Setting the books in their places settles him in his place too. Goethe goes here, so too can the knot of worry that lives within Tsumugi’s breastbone slot into its place on the shelf.

Ah, maybe he’s getting a bit too caught up in himself again. Tsumugi shakes his head. It happens from time to time.

His fingers brush over something odd, a gap between the bookshelves, and he pauses. Dust motes light up the air in swirling bits of gold, disturbed here and there by his passage, the sunset inexorable and marvelous to behold within the library, but here… Here is a small place that leads only down. Tsumugi gnaws on the inside of his lip.

And then pops the secret passage open.

The shelf moves back with a creak, stopping with a dull thud. Tsumugi winces, glancing down. Hopefully he’s wrong, and Natsume isn’t hiding out here again. But he doesn’t know for certain.

He creeps down the steps, taking care to place his feet carefully and there, at the bottom, laying half over the desk he has set up down here, is Natsume. He’s breathing quietly and deeply, eyes closed in slumber as Tsumugi takes care to be quiet as he comes closer. Yeah, he’s completely out. And something in him goes soft and tender at the thought of Natsume staying here, in a place Tsumugi takes care of. Like he cleaned up a birdhouse and has found that, come spring, something has moved in. Like he’s done something worthwhile after all.

“Stop Staring. You’re being Creepy,” Natsume orders, one golden eye opened, a leonine slit.

“Ahh, right. Sorry, Natsume-kun.”

Sitting up, Natsume yawns, stretching, and Tsumugi finds his gaze wandering down the familiar lines of Natsume’s body, catching on the jut of his hip and wrist, the shaking tension of his thighs, before he jerks his attention back to Natsume’s sleepily amused face. “Senpai, come Here.”

Tsumugi barely steps forward before Natsume grabs him. Natsume’s hand is warm around his wrist, tight without being restrictive. It’s just skinship, he tell himself. It’s the strange, gentle grounding of another person’s body, and it doesn’t have to mean anything at all.

A pity, then, that he wants it to mean so much.

Natsume blinks slowly up at him before turning Tsumugi’s hand up and dropping a kiss there against the soft creases. “Stop looking at me like That, Senpai. It doesn’t suit You.”

Oh god. Tsumugi knows his face is just absolutely red with the amount of heat it’s giving off, but the visible sign of embarrassment seems to only amuse Natsume. In retaliation, Tsumugi leans down and noses along the sleep-warm curve of Natsume’s skin with his own cold face, just to hear Natsume twitch and laugh and pull him in closer and closer.

And maybe, just maybe, this is a place he can make his home too.


End file.
